


Hell on earth/Heaven in unholy time.

by demonsonthemoon



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-26
Updated: 2014-09-26
Packaged: 2018-02-18 21:54:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2363465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonsonthemoon/pseuds/demonsonthemoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There has been a zombie apocalypse. Jehan can read minds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hell on earth/Heaven in unholy time.

**Author's Note:**

> Jehan uses they/them/their pronouns. Quote and title from "Two Sonnets" by Allen Ginsberg.  
> Warning for: zombies, slight gore, a bit of blood, reference to abuse/self-harm left to interpretation.

**I live in stillness now, in living flames.**  
 **\- Allen Ginsberg.**

  
The Day of the Catastrophe (what does it say about humans that they refuse to call it an apocalypse?), Jehan was at their parents' home for the week-end. They quite liked it there, in the country, isolated enough from their neighbours to block out most of the voices invading their head. They were used to their parents' thoughts, could block them out. It almost felt like being normal. The city was different. The crowd there was dense, with everyone thinking so loudly it used to make Jehan bit their cheek to choke down screams. The city was pain. The world after the Catastrophe was pain too.

*****

That day, the sky turned red as the sun rose. Not the pink light of dawn, something darker. It got redder and redder until it reached its zenith. At first, people questioned it. They tried to find explanations. Then they stopped having the time to think about such trivial things. To Jehan's knowledge, nobody ever found out if the dead had actually risen, or if the mutation had only affected living people. All they knew was that undeads had appeared, forming groups in graveyards, and that they had soon started to attack humans.

Undeads feed off human flesh. It doesn't matter if the human is alive or dead. In desperate hunger, some undeads try to eat one another, or remains of their kins. During the Catastrophe, there were more than enough living people to satiate them.

Jehan's family tried to run away. Like everyone else. It did no good.  
Every car had to stop at some point, because of traffic, of a blocked road, or simply because it had run out of gas. And when a car stopped, it became the perfect target for undeads. Multiple people trapped in a small space? A buffet.

That's what happened to Jehan's parents. Their car got stuck in traffic as they tried to get on the motorway. At first they were still hopeful, they thought that these things, these undeads could not possibly follow them this far out of towns. They could. Of course they could. It took a bit of time, that's all. And then people started running out of their cars as fast as they could, in random directions. Jehan's family didn't react quickly enough. They were on the far right side of the road, and an undead came at them from the trees on the roadside. It shattered the glass with a fist, sending shards of it flying in the face of Jehan's mother. She screamed. A high, harsh, irrational sound that haunted her child every since.

The first thing Jehan's father said was for them to get out, which Jehan did, opening the left door and all but jumping onto the road there. Their father didn't. He stayed seated to try and get his wife out, trying to fight away the abnormally thin and yellow-ish arm of the undead. He took too long. Jehan's mother, mad with pain from the glass and scratched from the undead, didn't understand what was going on and couldn't move. Another undead, drawn by the smell of fresh blood, attacked the car from the other side. Their mother screamed.

Jehan screamed too. As loudly as they could, they screamed their lungs out, blocking out every other sound, every other thought, everything else. Their knees gave out and they kept screaming. Tears started rolling down their face as the mutilated hand of their father appeared through a broken window. They screamed, and the blood-red sky seemed to scream with them.

They felt a hand on their shoulder, and suddenly someone grabbed them by the hand. A woman's dark fingers closed around theirs, and she started dragging them away. It didn't take long for the realisation to hit Jehan, and he started running along with her. She had just saved their life.

They lost track of the woman in the chaos that ensued but, deep in their heart, still wishes she survived just as they did.

It wasn't easy. At first, people tried to help each other, sharing the resources they found. Then they realised that those same resources were growing rarer and rarer. The laws of nature took reign on humanity once more.

If Jehan were to describe what the biggest difference was between the world today and what it was, they would say the number of thoughts. Pre-Catastrophe, listening to the world was like sitting in a room with a radio shooting static in each of their ear. Now, more often than not, the only thing Jehan could hear was a timid whisper at the back of their mind.

*****

Grey clouds, as always, were swirling over their head. Great puffs of century-old smoke obscuring the gentle light of the setting sun. Standing on the edge of an old and broken stone wall, Jehan was listening.

Mostly to the wind moaning, as it blew through the ruins of human civilization. Sometimes to the high-pitched lamentations of hungry undeads. And, at the very edge of his range of consciousness, to a few thoughts.

Jehan closed their eyes, absorbing the last rays of warmth the day had to offer.

_Shit._

They opened their eyes, startled. Was that...

_God-fucking-damnit to holy hell._

A thought. Loud and clear. Crystalline. It couldn't be far, if they could hear it like that.

_Fuck!_

Jehan felt a sharp pain through their brain. Were they still picking up on the other person's feelings? They had to be in trouble. Probably undeads. After hesitating for a few moments, Jehan jumped from the remnants of wall they'd been perched on.

It had been so long since they'd heard a voice like that. Since they'd been so close to someone human. It was just easier to live on your own in days like these. Getting attached to someone and ending up having to kill them or die was worse than any kind of loneliness. Still, the idea of another living person next to them sent thrills down their throat.

They started off by walking in the direction the thoughts were coming from. It was a bit like trying to locate something by ear, except the source was less precise, as if the sound had somehow been filtered. Then, as they received more and more panicked feelings, Jehan started to run.

_One down. To the left - damn, fuckers - what's - shit._

Jehan was starting to break into a sweat. They passed a gas station slowly getting eaten away by weeds, and reached a long extent of flat, vegetation-less ground. An ancient motorway, they thought, shuddering.

Sure enough, there were some car skeletons abandoned a little further up the road, away from the settlement Jehan had come from. Back to one of the cars was a dark-haired person that Jehan would have guessed was male, trying to fight off two undeads. Their thin yellow skin, peeling in some places to reveal flesh the color of mold, didn't even register in Jehan's mind. They were used to it by now, just as they were used to the white eyes filling their orbits and the cracked orifice that served as a mouth for the undeads.

Jehan drew a hatchet from their belt and approached the scene more slowly. The stranger didn't see them, too focused on his own fight. He had a large knife in one hand, an axe in the other and what looked like a bow on his back. Prepared, then. Still, one of his weapons was immobilized, trapped in the flesh of one of the undead's left arm, and the position didn't give him enough balance to land a nice blow with is other blade.

The undead on the stranger's right side suddenly turned its head towards Jehan, nostrils flared. Jehan cursed themself for not checking the direction of the wind, but took a step forward anyway. The undead detached itself from the stranger and fixed its hollow white eyes on Jehan. It opened its mouth to let out a groan. Jehan raised their arms, both hands on his hatchet.

The undead lashed out, throwing itself at Jehan hand first. They dodged the attack easily, hitting the undead's arm on the side with their blade, but not precisely enough to draw blood. They used their momentum to push the undead to the left, then tripped it with their leg. The creature stumbled, not falling to the ground as Jehan had hoped, and immediately launched itself back at the young person. It was hard for Jehan to concentrate on its attacks when thoughts from the dark-haired man next to the car were flooding their mind even more powerfully than before.

_Who's that? Why... not important. Focus. Get the axe free, strike for the neck._

The stranger pushed his arms away from his body, then bent his leg and kicked the undead in the stomach with enough force to throw it off-balance. Quickly, he tried to slash at it with the knife in his left hand, but the undead bent down to avoid it.

Jehan jerked back to their own reality. There was a scratch on one of their hand from the undead's nails, although it had miraculously failed to make them bleed. They raised their hatchet once again, brought it halfway down, then quickly changed direction to hit the undead on its flank. The creature whined, its yellow skin opening up to reveal rotting flesh. It tried to jump towards Jehan, enraged, but they had anticipated the attack and their foot went out in a circular kick that finally brought the undead to the ground. They made quick work of cutting its head off. It had stopped being difficult after the first dozen times.

The second undead had just had the surprise of feeling a knife blade grow out of his back, and the stranger finished it off with his axe. Then turned towards Jehan.

  
"Who are you?" asked the young man, axe still tightly gripped between his fingers.  
  
Jehan raised their hands above their head. "No one. I heard noises, came to check it out, and saw you were in trouble." Now that they thought of it, it might not have been true. There were two other undead bodies a little further up the road, one with an arrow stuck in its chest. That man could probably have managed to kill the two remaining ones by himself.  
  
"What do you want?"  
  
"Nothing, I promise."  
  
"People always want something." The grip on his weapon slackened, which Jehan took as a good side. But then the man stumbled, leaning against the car for support and face loosing its color.  
  
Jehan threw aside all caution. Later on, they would claim that they'd known it was perfectly safe, that since they had sensed no threat in the young man's thought they had deemed the situation secure.  
  
They had done no such thing. Jehan hadn't paid any attention to the thoughts coming from the stranger, just reacted instinctively and closed the gap between them to lay a steadying hand on the man's shoulder.  
  
Then the thoughts had come.  
  
Like a waterfall, they fell into Jehan's mind, an unruly mass of water, in which it was impossible to make out one drop from the other. Memories, emotions, words, pictures, all swirling in an explosion of sensations that burnt through Jehan's brain with a seering pain. Instead of helping out, he ended up collapsing beside the stranger.  
  
Somehow, he managed to hold onto one thing out of this torrent.  
  
 _Enjolras._  
  
Was that the stranger's name?  
  
"How do you know that name?" asked the dark-haired man, taking a step backwards, away from Jehan. "Who are you? How do you know that name?"  
  
Jehan put a hand to their head, carefully moving a strand of dark blond hair out of their eyes. Had they spoken aloud? It hurt so much. Without physical contact, the stream of thoughts had calmed down to a more tolerable level, but Jehan was still disoriented. Their power had never been so brutal before. It had been painful at times, but never like this, never so _out of control_. Was it something about the young man beside him? Or was it just a lack of practice born from isolation.  
  
"I don't know. I just... know." Jehan knew that it wouldn't quench the stranger's curiosity, but they couldn't find a better answer. Could they just tell him that they could hear his every thought? How would he react? In a world where everything could be dangerous, from a simple human to an undead, where would Jehan find their place?  
  
"What does that even mean?" Holding one hand over his left shoulder, the young man raised his knife, blade towards Jehan.  
  
"Please." Jehan raised their arms again. "I can't explain." They suddenly noticed how part of the stranger's brown shirt was darker than the rest of it. The part just under the young man's fingers. "You're bleeding. Let me help you."  
  
The man took a step backwards as Jehan approached, holding his knife in what was meant to be a threatening manner. Then another bout of diziness shook him and he slumped against the ruins of the car. He had no other choice than to let Jehan take care of his wound. His body was too weak to protest.  
  
Jehan slowly lowered the man's hand. The palm was red. Carefully, he forced the stranger to sit down on the ground. They slowly placed the bow on the man's side, in a way that made it clear they had no intention to steal it. The stranger's shirt was sticking to the wound and they pulled it off. His chest was full of scars, small or large, some that evidently came from fighting and... others. The wounded raised his head and sent a dark gaze in Jehan's direction, defying them to make any comment. They didn't say anything. Jehan looked at the wound. It was a cut, not very deep but large and irregular. Still, it had to have come from a weapon.  
  
"My own axe. It was pushed into the flesh."  
  
Jehan nodded. All in all, it was a good thing. If there had been no contact with an undead in the wound, the risk of infection was reduced.  
  
Nobody really knew how the mutation spread. After the chaos of the Catastrophe, humanity had been too shocked to re-organise and conduct any sort of medical test. Some people got sick and, at the point of death, started changing to become what had been called undeads. The sickness could last anything from a few days to whole months, but the moment of turning was immediate and irreversible. Sometimes it took a while to notice, because the victim's appearance didn't change immediately, but if it had happened, the condition would always worsen. Some people argued that part of the human consciousness remained even in the undeads. Those people were not numerous, for they had a tendency to rapidly get killed when they stepped outside on their own.  
  
Jehan cleaned the young man's wound with some water from a flask they carried around. Their patient had to be a few years older than them, if looks gave anything away. The whole time of the operation, they tried to force themself not to listen to the thoughts that flowed through their mind from where he was touching the stranger. They still couldn't help but catch on to a few, though. The name "Enjolras" kept reappearing, but also the laughter of a young girl with the same dark curls as the young man, the sensation of hands on his shoulders and the smell of alcohol.  
  
"What's your name?" Jehan asked, trying to distract themself.  
  
The man took a few seconds to reply. "Grantaire." He noticed that Jehan was debating bandaging his wound or not and added: "Just cut off a strip of my shirt, I've got another one." Jehan did just that.  
  
"I'm Jehan."  
  
Grantaire didn't reply, letting them do their work instead. He was still quite out of breath, bu didn't seem to be getting any worse for the time being. Jehan started to put the makeshift bandage into place, stretching the material of the shirt to a maximum. They carefully made Grantaire turn around  to tighten it in his back. There was another large scar there, the size of their palm. It looked like a burn, one that had happened many years before. Jehan tried to avoid it, but as they carefully tied a knot to the strip of shirt, he touched the scarred tissue.  
  
A sensation of warmth engulfed them. They shivered. It wasn't a comforting warmth, it was a frightening one, a deadly one. They closed their eyes a the feeling increased, bringing pain. Light seemed to surround them, getting clearer and clearer in shape until Jehan could recognise the inside of a house being devoured by flames.  
  
Smoke filled their nostrils, then their lungs. They could feel the warmth not only around them but also inside their body itself. Like Jehan was themself becoming part of the fire. Conscious that this had to be one of Grantaire's memories, Jehan tried to let go of the young man, to break the contact with his burnt skin, but they couldn't move. They couldn't breathe. They couldn't do anything but feel the pain, and the tears that slowly made their way down their cheeks.  
  
A figure was lying before them. The body was on fire too, skin blistering in the flames, blond hair turning to grey ashes. The smell of burning flesh supplanted that of burning wood for a while, and Jehan felt like throwing up. As they watched the man disappearing into a mouth of red and yellow, a name echoed in their skulls.  
  
 _Enjolras_ , like a whisper.  
  
 _Enjolras_ , like a prayer.  
  
 _Enjolras_ , like a cry.  
  
 _Enjolras_ , like a kiss.  
  
 _Enjolras_ , like a scream of pain.  
  
Darkness fell and the warmth receeded, leaving a ghostly cold in its place. Jehan felt themself slump forward, their body hitting another's. At the back of their consciousness, a whisper.  
  
 _Are you okay? What happened? It hurts. What am I doing? Are you okay? Jehan, are you okay?_  
  
They tried to open their eyes, but couldn't. Their body was sticky from sweat, and their face from tears. They felt cold, way too cold for a  
summer night. They tried to breathe, in silence.  
  
 _Jehan. Jehan._  
  
"Jehan!"  
  
Slowly, they opened their eyes and stared into Grantaire's own. So much worry there. Such a childish and innocent worry, an instinctive reaction to a stranger's pain. That type of thoughts got people killed in this world. At this moment, Jehan didn't care. A smile tugged at their lips as they basked in the feeling of their own existence for another being.  
  
"It's so calm out here..." they said, with difficulty. Their mouth was dry and moving their jaw felt like biting into a ball of cotton. "And you're so loud."  
  
Grantaire let out a small laugh of relief. He carefully sat Jehan down against the old car, right next to him. "What the hell happened?"  
  
"t's hard to explain."  
  
"I've got time. We've got time."


End file.
